Agency evaluation checklist

Strategic capability and outcomes

Ask for a small workshop before you hire. Strategy is not a PDF; it is the conversation about tradeoffs. Good signs: they map demand to funnel stages and can point to specific outcomes from previous work. Bad sign: they deliver long plans with no measurable targets. Practical test: ask them to sketch a 6 month go-to-market for one product line on a whiteboard. If they default to generic channels, move on. You want crisp answers on target accounts, expected conversion rates, and the one experiment that will prove product-market fit faster.

Industry and vertical experience

Vertical familiarity matters more than general experience. Niche sectors have distinct buyer journeys, jargon, procurement cycles, and compliance hurdles. A team that has run three GDPR-heavy launches will spot risk earlier than a generalist. Example: B2B buyers in regulated industries expect downloadable technical proof and a named reference quickly. If the agency’s samples lack compliance artifacts, that’s a red flag.

Full-service vs specialized scope

Decide what you actually need: stop buying "full service" because it sounds convenient. Full-service helps when your org lacks any internal capabilities. Specialized shops deliver faster, deeper results for single domains like SEO, paid, or product content. Rule of thumb: use a generalist for orchestration, specialists for execution. Contracts should make that explicit. Don’t assume the agency will cover tech integration unless it’s in the scope.

Technology, integrations, and stacks

Ask for a list of production tools, martech integrations, and sample APIs they’ve worked with. Look for real experience with your stack, not "we can figure it out." Integration costs often outstrip creative fees. Get estimates for SSO, CRM hooks, tracking, and tag governance upfront.

Team structure and seniority

Make sure senior people touch your account. Juniors can do the heavy lifting, but strategic decisions should come from staff with real-world B2B experience. Ask who will attend monthly steering meetings and who owns escalation. Practical check: request CVs for the identified team members and verify one reference per senior role.

Evidence: case artifacts and metrics

Don’t accept sanitized slides. Request raw artifacts: campaign briefs, sample tracking spreadsheets, closed-loop attribution examples, and the actual dashboards they used. Look for consistent improvements rather than miraculous spikes explained by "seasonality."

Legal, data protection, IP ownership

Insist on clear clauses about IP for creative and code, data ownership, and data export procedures. Ask how they handle personal data. If they hesitate on export or handover timelines, expect friction at the end of the contract.

Service offering comparisons

Demand generation & ABM expectations

Expect a combination of account selection, bespoke outreach, and cross-channel content. Good agencies start with segmentation and measurable account lists, then layer tactics. Typical deliverables

• ICP and account lists mapped by intent signals
• Multi-touch sequences: email, ads, events
• Personalized assets per buying committee member

Primary KPIs to expect

• Marketing qualified accounts added
• Meetings or pipeline influenced
• Cost per opportunity (not just cost per lead)

Content strategy and production

Quality beats quantity for B2B. But you need a cadence that supports sales. Content types and velocity benchmarks

• Technical whitepaper or guide: 1 every 6-8 weeks
• Case study: 1 per closed major deal
• Thought leadership byline: 2 per quarter
• Sales enablement content: 2-4 pieces per month

Quality checks and reuse strategy Use a single editorial owner to avoid tone drift. Every long form asset should have a repurposing plan: blog posts, slide decks, short videos, and email snippets. This multiplies ROI without much extra cost.

SEO and organic growth scope

SEO for B2B is slow but compounding. You need topical depth, not just keywords. Technical, on‑page, and topical work

• Fix crawlability, canonical issues, and schema
• Build topic clusters with pillar pages
• Deliver a prioritized content roadmap tied to buying intent

Performance metrics and timelines Expect early technical wins in 4–8 weeks. Organic traffic and lead improvements take 6–12 months. Track topical authority growth and contact-attributed organic pipeline, not vanity traffic.

Paid media and performance channels

Paid is about controlled experiments. Channel choice depends on account profiles. Channel roles and budget allocation

• Account-based display and social for targeted reach
• Search for intent harvesting
• Programmatic for scale among similar accounts

Conversion metrics and attribution Measure cost per qualified meeting and cost per opportunity. Use time-decay or position-based models tied to the sales cycle. Don’t optimize solely for clicks.

Marketing automation & CRM integration

This is where most projects break. Mapping the lead lifecycle is non-negotiable. Data flows, lead lifecycle, and playbooks Define lead scoring rules, what triggers nurture, and when sales gets notified. Build playbooks for each outcome: demo requested, content downloaded, high intent behavior. Test one playbook first, then scale.

Analytics, dashboards, and attribution

Good analytics connects activity to pipeline. Bad analytics produces dashboards that look nice and do nothing. Data sources, modeling, and cadence Pull data from CRM, marketing automation, and ad platforms. Standardize naming and lead source fields first. Use weekly anomaly checks and monthly attribution reviews with sales. Model at the opportunity level to capture long sales cycles.

Pricing, contracts, KPIs (Spain)

Common pricing models explained

• Retainer plus variable performance fee: predictable plus skin in the game.
• Project-based: good for one-off builds.
• Time and materials: flexible, but watch scope creep.
• Revenue share: useful for early-stage sellers, risky for buyers.

Benchmark cost ranges by scope

Expect:

• Small specialist (SEO or content): low thousands per month
• Full demand gen with integrations: mid five figures per month
• Complex enterprise programs with POC and tech work: higher five to six figures per month

Adjust for Madrid or Barcelona rates, travel, and bilingual production.

Contract clauses to negotiate

• Exit and handover timelines for assets and data
• SLAs for deliverables and response times
• Clear IP ownership and third-party license warranties
• Performance review checkpoints with termination windows

KPI framework and reporting cadence

Set both leading and lagging indicators and align them to sales stages. Recommended KPI hierarchy (leading → lagging)

• Engagement metrics: account touches, content engagement
• Acquisition metrics: MQLs, qualified meetings
• Revenue metrics: pipeline influenced, closed revenue

Report weekly for operations, monthly for strategic review, and quarterly for roadmap updates.

ROI forecasting method and sensitivity

Build a scenario model: base, best, and worst. Use conservative conversion rates and account for deal velocity. Run sensitivity on one variable at a time: conversion rate, average deal size, campaign cost. If your forecast collapses with small changes, the plan is fragile.

RFP, selection, and scoring

RFP essentials and must‑ask questions

Keep the RFP tight. Ask for:

• One example of a similar challenge and measurable outcome
• Team CVs and time allocation
• A short POC proposal with deliverables and timeline
• Pricing breakdown by phase and item

Weighted scoring matrix (template)

Sample criteria and weightings

• Strategy and approach 25%
• Relevant experience 20%
• Team seniority 15%
• Technical capability 15%
• Price and commercials 15%
• Cultural fit 10%

Document scores and notes. Share them with stakeholders to avoid gut-only picks.

Shortlist interview guide

Focus interviews on tradeoffs. Ask:

• What’s one thing you would stop doing for us?
• Where do you expect pushback from our team?
• What’s your first 90 day plan?

Don’t waste time on rehearsed slides.

Proof‑of‑concept assignment design

Keep POC small, time boxed, and measurable. Example: run a one-month account-based pilot with three accounts, defined touches, and a target number of meetings. Pay for the pilot. If they underdeliver, it reveals execution risk quickly.

Decision timetable and stakeholder roles

Map decisions to RACI. Include procurement, legal, and sales early for deal structure and acceptance criteria. Finalize vendor within the timeframe needed to begin the POC, not later.

Onboarding and 90‑day plan

Critical access and data checklist

Give accounts from day one: CRM admin, analytics, ad accounts, content library, customer lists. Provide a glossary of internal terms and a list of existing campaigns. No access, no results.

30/60/90 deliverable milestones

• 30 days: baseline audits, quick wins, POC kickoff
• 60 days: campaign launches, first A/B tests, initial analytics
• 90 days: measurable pipeline created, playbook handed to sales

Governance, meeting rhythm, and SLAs

Weekly working sessions, monthly steering, and quarterly roadmap reviews. Define SLAs for response times and escalation paths. Make meeting owners accountable for decisions.

Early optimization experiments

Run cheap tests first: messaging variations with small audiences, subject line tests, landing page tweaks. Learn quickly and stop what fails.

Handover and internal enablement

Train sales on new assets and scoring. Deliver a one-page cheat sheet for SDRs with messaging, objection handling, and next steps. Handover is not a single meeting. Plan incremental enablement.

Red flags and risk mitigation

Transparency and reporting warnings

If dashboards are opaque or metrics change definitions frequently, you’re being set up to fail. Demand raw data exports and a documented metric dictionary.

Asset ownership and exit clauses

No handover date or technical export plan means painful migration later. Insist on exportable sources for creative, code, and data and a timeline for handover.

Cultural, language, and market fit

Language nuances matter. If the agency can’t role play a sales call in Spanish for your market, they won’t nail messaging. Test this early.

Overdependence and capacity risks

An agency that becomes the sole keeper of your playbooks is a risk. Keep key processes documented and have a backup supplier or internal owner.

Contingency plans and audit triggers

Set triggers for audit: missed major milestones, unexplained drop in performance, or repeated missed SLAs. Include a clause for an independent audit and a predefined remediation plan.